


Police Boxes Don’t Just Vanish, Do They?

by lost_spook



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Public Eye (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, POV First Person, POV Outsider, Private Investigators
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2013-11-27
Packaged: 2018-01-02 19:56:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1060964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/pseuds/lost_spook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For one private detective, missing persons cases and inexplicable vanishing police boxes seem to go together</p>
            </blockquote>





	Police Boxes Don’t Just Vanish, Do They?

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Полицейские будки так просто не исчезают, верно?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8283325) by [Kollega](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kollega/pseuds/Kollega)



> Technically, this is a crossover with _Public Eye_ (a UK TV show about a private detective that ran from 1965-1975), but it's mainly me taking the opportunity to write a fun outsider POV for Doctor Who - no knowledge of it is needed (or at least, I hope not). If anyone does know Public Eye, then I apologise for my inadequate attempts to write Frank Marker POV. He definitely doesn't belong to me, anyway, no more than the Doctor does.

**1964: As the Proverbial…**

Some clients just won’t listen, and this one was a classic case. I kept telling the old lady – Miss Chaplet – that it was the police she wanted, not an Enquiry Agent, but she wouldn’t hear of it. And when it comes to a lost girl and the whole of London to search, that’s just not good enough. Needles and haystacks don’t even come into it.

“Look, Miss Chaplet,” I said, trying again, “if your niece is missing –”

“Great-niece,” she corrected me. “You see, that is the problem, Mr Marker. I know that’s why she must have gone. She seems to think I’m too old-fashioned – too strict. Perhaps I am, but I cannot abide the way so many young people behave today, and I will not have her running around with unsuitable friends, or picking up that awful slang they use nowadays.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine a teenage girl being driven to making some sort of protest under the circumstances. If I had to live with Miss Chaplet looking that disapproving at me all the time, I’d have run away, too. Even so, I didn’t like it.

“If you could only make some enquiries, Mr Marker, I’m sure you’ll find her,” she said. “You see, I’m not even sure who all her friends are – and I am so sure Dorothea is with one of them. Just trying to give me a fright, I suppose, until I let her do some of the silly things she seems to like. And I really am not calling in the police until I know absolutely that isn’t true.”

I pointed out that could be too late, if something had happened, but she was adamant, so I gave in. Sounded like it wasn’t me or the police, it was me or no one. At least if I didn’t turn up anything, she might finally be persuaded to go to them. So, she gave me the details, a photograph and told me that the child insisted on answering to the nonsensical nickname of “Dodo” rather than her proper Christian name of Dorothea. Had to bite my tongue hard not to comment on that. Talk about an ill-fated name. Still, the old lady seemed sure enough that the girl was hiding with a friend, so I’d have to hope she’d fared better than her proverbial namesake.

So, I made initial enquiries: rang up the nearest hospitals, called the school – they’d been ringing the aunt themselves – managed to extract the name of a couple of these unsuitable friends out of Miss Chaplet, and the fact that she couldn’t say whether the girl had taken any clothes herself – very little if she had, then. She let me in to search the room, but there were no hints there – nothing obviously missing, no love letters under the mattress, nothing that explained her disappearing act. It wasn’t looking good.

The friends weren’t much help – all they could say was that Dodo had been on her way home last they’d seen her, heading across Wimbledon Common. Even worse, but when I phoned Miss Chaplet from a phone box, she insisted I go on rather than contacting the police. Some of them are like that. I think they feel death’s better than loss of respectability.

I did the best I could – asked dog walkers, cornered the local bobby in the pub and showed him a photo. He was the only one who had anything to say and even that wasn’t what you could call useful. There’d been an accident that day, he said, which a couple of the others had mentioned, and there had been a girl – run off to get help. He’d only seen her from a distance, couldn’t say if it was her or not, only that she’d definitely been dark-haired, so it could have been. 

Then he looked across at me and said, with gloomy resignation, “You won’t believe the next bit. Nobody does.”

“Try me,” I said. My line of work, I’ve seen everything, I tell you.

And that was when he told me there’d been a police box there – and it had vanished right in front of him. “My mate saw it, too,” he added defensively. “Don’t know how it was done.”

I’d been hopeful for a minute, but after that wind-up, I left him. The police aren’t always fond of an enquiry agent, to put it mildly. I don’t know what that cock and bull story was supposed to be, but it wasn’t an answer. I mean, police boxes don’t just vanish, do they? 

So, I did the only thing I could, which was to go round to the old lady’s and stick my foot down until she gave in and phoned the police herself. Much good it did anyone. I saw the case in the papers after, and it didn’t sound as if the police were getting anywhere with it, either. That sort of thing, you just have to try not to think about it. As for me, I grabbed the first case that came along after with both hands, even though I’m not usually keen on the whole lost pet business if I can avoid it. Nobody takes you seriously when you’re looking for a cocker spaniel or something, but there are times when that’s not such a bad thing, not when you look at the alternatives.

 

**1965: Round the Houses**

It was a long route that had led here, all round the houses and back again, if you like, but it had unexpectedly paid off: what could only be the missing couple in person, sitting inside the flat among the boxes and dustsheets, as cosy as you please. Would you believe it, after all the trouble I’d gone to?

It’d been the sister who’d hired me – looking around the grubby rooftop office as if she might be in danger of catching something. Runaway schoolteacher, she’d said. Felt the police weren’t interested and wanted someone to take another look. They’d listened at first – her sister (Barbara Wright, she told me) had disappeared at the same time as a lot of fuss and bother up at Coal Hill School, but they came to the conclusion in the end that that was only smoke and mirrors and the important fact was that she’d disappeared at the same time as the science teacher, Mr Chesterton. It’s not an unusual story, not in my line of work, or theirs, so you can’t blame the police for that. I wasn’t keen on the idea either – two years down the line is a bit late. Talk about a cold trail! Still, she was pretty desperate – most people who make it as far as this office are – and insistent I give it a try. And who am I to argue when the rent’s due?

I started at the school. Under the pretence of working for a stationery firm, I got into see the secretary. Easy enough to steer the conversation round to the most excitement the place had probably ever seen. Miss Wright’s name had been paired with Mr Chesterton’s in school gossip. Though, the secretary said, to be fair, none of them would ever have thought it of either of them, running off like that, and it was funny about the car. Found outside a junkyard in Totter’s Lane, it had been, and then there had been that business – vandals or something, she said, and sounded vague and worried. The headmaster had been killed, she added, but then I must have heard about that?

“No?” I said, and sounded shocked enough to get another rush of voluntary information: Oh, yes, it was true enough. Terrible. Though, mind, he’d been acting funny for a week or so before. Maybe he’d been involved in something and that was what it had been about? I mean, you heard stories about these East End criminals, didn’t you? 

I’d agreed that you never knew, and surely nothing else had happened – you’d have thought people’d have been pulling their children out of the school with all that going on otherwise.

Some did, she’d said. There’d been one of them, and really that was funny as well, because of the address – that’d been Totter’s Lane as well, but she’d explained that to the police herself, and – after a compliment or two on the coffee and a bit of interest in her conclusions – she explained to me, too: It was the grandfather, she’d said. He’d been nervy about the whole idea of school. She’d spoken to him when he’d enrolled the girl – he’d been adamant she couldn’t stay long, not Susan. As for Totter’s Lane, it was, as it turned out, a false address and the secretary couldn’t honestly say she was all that surprised. 

So, next I went up to Totter’s Lane. Nothing to see there, which wasn’t surprising. Just the junkyard, which was about as enthralling as most junkyards. Sounded to me, from what the secretary had said, that the police were right about the old boy’s removal of his granddaughter being a red herring. There are plenty of people who’ve got something to hide from. Seems like he was another. 

Still, you’ve got to admit, you add up all these funny items and you’ve got nearly enough for a music hall comedy line up. So, I followed it up with a copper from round here who owes me a favour or two – I get the odd tip or two that needs passing on from time to time. He said much the same: it was funny, that, but there didn’t seem to be much other explanation – well, not unless bodies started turning up, of course, but it didn’t seem likely now, did it? I got the impression from something else he said that there was something a bit hush hush about the “vandalism” and the headmaster’s death, so I didn’t ask any more on that front. There’s some things you’re always best keeping your nose well out of.

Still, there was something else funny, he added – hilarious this case was getting to be, wasn’t it? – a mate of his had been on the beat back then and he’d sworn blind that the evening before they found the car there’d been a police box in the junkyard, and it’d been gone again in the morning.

Missing police boxes didn’t seem to be helpful, so I thanked him with the other half of the pint, and went back to more mundane enquiries, starting with Miss Wright’s flat. It was all shut up, no joy there. Neighbour in the next flat didn’t know anything, had only just moved in at the time, and didn’t want to talk, thanks.

I went round to Mr Chesterton’s place, claimed to be an old acquaintance and got an earful from his landlady for my pains. The usual story: she’d thought him such a nice respectable sort of man, and now look at the trouble and inconvenience he’d caused her, and she still had half his things and did anyone want to know about it or take them off her hands? And so on and so forth. I beat a hasty retreat at first opportunity.

Thought I’d try again at her flat, now it was later – might be able to catch another tenant home from work – and blow me down if it didn’t turn out that they were both there, like I said. If all missing people turned up back where you left them like that, I wouldn’t have half the work I’ve got. 

“You know,” I said, “your sister seems to think you’ve been missing for two years. Don’t tell me you’ve been here the whole time?”

The two of them exchanged a look.

“No,” Miss Wright said. “We’ve been… travelling.”

Mr Chesterton nodded. “Rome,” he said. “Paris. Mexico. All over the place.”

“And you didn’t think to send a line back to the worried relatives?” I said. I was holding back on the indignation, because I’d seen plenty of runaways in my time, and these two were different. I couldn’t make them out. “Not even a postcard with a ‘wish you were here’ even if you’d rather they weren’t?”

Miss Wright began to look annoyed at that. “Well, we _couldn’t_ ,” she said. “You’ll just have to believe us, I’m afraid – though I don’t see it’s any of your business at all, Mr – Mr –”

“Marker.”

“If Anne employed you to find us, well, then – here we are. What more do you want?”

That was true enough, I knew, and I peeled myself off the wall I’d been leaning on. That wasn’t why I was hanging around. I was curious, I’ll admit it, but it wasn’t that, either. “Look,” I said, “you’re right, of course. And what’s more, I’ll hold back on contacting my client so you can get in first, if you like, but –”

“Won’t that lose you your fee?”

I shrugged. Couldn’t say I’d earned it, considering, and she’d paid me the first day up front. “Thing is, you might want to come up with something more credible than that, or you’ll have the police asking you questions and they’re not so understanding as me. They’ll probably think it is their business.”

“I really don’t see –” began Mr Chesterton, but I cut him off again, and told him what had happened after they’d gone. I was sure it’d be news to them and, judging by their faces, it was.

Chesterton sat down on something covered in a dustsheet that looked more like a coffee table than a chair to me. “Funny, isn’t it? You don’t think about something like that happening back _here_.”

“Oh, Ian, do be careful,” said Miss Wright, and he looked down and hastily removed himself to an actual chair. “What if I say that I had this – well, I had this idea about just leaving and going travelling – being – being spontaneous, for a change –?”

“Both of you?” I said.

“Obviously!”

I folded my arms. “See, that one depends on whether you want your jobs back. I’m not a school teacher, so maybe you can put me right on this, but aren’t the Governors’ boards a bit prejudiced against behaviour like that? Running off with a married man, and everything?”

“I _beg_ your pardon?” said Miss Wright, turning impressively icy. “I don’t know what you think gives you the right –”

I nodded towards them – their hands. “No rings,” I said. “And you’re claiming you ran off together, so either you really were set on being free spirits, or one of you has got an unwanted spouse somewhere. And since your sister swore blind you hadn’t –”

“I think you ought to leave now, Mr Marker,” said Chesterton, getting to his feet again. I’d heard that tone plenty of times before, too.

I backed away, not about to argue. Like they said, it was none of my business. 

“No, Ian,” she said, suddenly. “I suppose it _is_ only what everyone will think, isn’t it? Well, Mr Marker? What do you suggest we tell everyone?”

“How about the truth?”

“We _have_ been travelling,” said Miss Wright. “It is the truth.”

Chesterton grinned suddenly. “If we told you the rest of it, you’d never believe us, anyway.”

“All right,” I said, since I liked them despite everything. They weren’t my usual sort somehow, as I’d said. “You’ve got to explain the car – you didn’t take any of your belongings, not that anyone could tell. You could say you saw something – had to run, I suppose – you’d left a message for the landlady but she must have missed it, or it got lost. You can probably come up with something better yourselves. Least I’ve warned you, that’s all.”

Miss Wright got to her feet then and showed me out. “I expect we will,” she said, and I had a feeling she probably would.

“Oh, by the way,” I said to Chesterton, turning back halfway into the hall, “talking of your landlady, you want to watch your step with her – she’s not too fond of you right now. Might do you a mischief if you’re not careful.”

Chesterton seemed surprised. “Mrs Crossland? Oh, you must be mistaken. We always got on well –”

“That’s just it,” I told him. “It’s the disappointment. She thought you were a nice, respectable sort of bloke. A model tenant. Now you’ve let her down – well.” I sucked in my breath and shook my head at him, and then left. Of course, after he’d shut the door, I nipped back down the hallway and listened at the door. Looked like the case was over, and ended happier than usual, but I had to make sure they weren’t about to scarper again.

“There’s one thing,” I heard Chesterton saying, “I think there’s something in that idea about the register office.”

“Ian, I’m _not_ having you think you need to make an honest woman of me – that’s ridiculous, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks!”

“I’m not,” he said, and he sounded amused now. “Sounds as if we’re going to make a thoroughly dishonest man and woman of each other if we’re going to avoid being arrested or shunned by all decent society, but I just… don’t think it’s such a bad idea, that’s all.”

I decided then that I’d heard enough and I’d better hop it, but it was one of those frustrating cases where you never get to learn the half of it, I could see that. Seemed to be set for a happier ending than most, though, and I suppose that’s something.

 

**3\. 1971: Lost Contractor**

 

“So, Mr Marker, care to explain what you were doing in that warehouse?”

I didn’t, as it happened. I hunched up into my mac on the chair and stared back at the army bloke. I’d been looking into the business for my client, and next thing I knew a lot of armed soldiers had turned up and I wound up in here, being interrogated by this military officer and some other bloke – don’t know what he was supposed to be, but he had an offensively frilly dress sense. I just decided to think of them as Colonel Blimp and Professor Fancy-Pants until they bothered to introduce themselves. There was a girl with them, though – she seemed all right. Made me sympathetic faces every now and then, but it’s not a compensation for being arrested by some sort of bloody government agency. And I’d always thought those conspiracy theorists were crazy. Laugh was on me, it seemed, like it usually is. 

“Mr Marker!” Colonel Blimp didn’t like non-co-operation much, apparently.

I leant forward, onto the desk. “Look, how about _you_ try answering some questions! I’ve been dragged in here – at gunpoint! – and held against my will, and all I was doing was minding my own business.”

“And what exactly _is_ your business?” Professor Fancy-Pants asked from his corner of the room.

Colonel Blimp who’d obviously been off doing his homework before he’d come back again to resume our conversation, raised his eyebrow in a way that gave me the definite impression I was being viewed as more of a low-life than usual. “Yes, Mr Marker. I suggest you explain. You’re an Enquiry Agent, you say – and one with a criminal record, it appears. Now, will you please answer a simple question: what were you doing in the warehouse?”

“Following up a case,” I said, since, if it all came back to _that_ again, there was no point in arguing, was there? Might get myself shot. “Contractor. Last heard of on his way here. That’s all.”

Colonel Blimp pulled back, giving me another hard look, but it seemed as if he thought that might be plausible. Finally. “Is there anyone who can vouch for this story of yours, Mr Marker? Your client, perhaps?”

I shrugged. Didn’t want them bothering Mrs Ackland, so there was only one option left, though I was going to have to pay for it, one way or the other. Probably the other. “You could ring DI Firbank. Windsor. Call him Percy, if you like.”

I got another suspicious look, and then Colonel Blimp took himself off again.

“Looking for someone?” Professor Fancy-Pants walked over at that point. “Who, precisely?”

I don’t give out information about my clients, especially not to shady top secret government types. If nothing else, there’d be bound to be forms, and I had enough trouble with my income tax.

The girl gave me a bright smile and said, “I’m sure Mr Marker didn’t mean any harm, Doctor.”

“Harm?” Professor Fancy-Pants swung round on her. “Jo! Isn’t it obvious? He must be working for the Master!”

I blinked a bit at that. I get all sorts in my office – comes with the territory – but anyone using that sort of a nickname isn’t someone I’d touch with a barge pole. I decided instead the best thing was just to get on with what I’d come for. I might even get an answer, you never knew. I pulled out the photograph from inside my coat and pushed it across the desk. “Bob Ackland. He was up here on a contracting job, him and his brother-in-law. His wife’s worried about him. Seems he always rings home when he’s away – she’s never known him not to, not more than once. Likes saying goodnight to the children and what have you. She said the police wouldn’t take her seriously, not yet, but she knew something was wrong, and asked me to take a look. Which was what I was trying to do when your lot landed on me.”

He sat down in the chair then, the Doctor, or whatever it was he was really called, and took hold of the photograph; his wild theories dropped, it seemed. “My dear chap,” he said, and then put the picture down again. “Then I’m most terribly sorry.”

“Oh,” said the girl, leaning over his shoulder. “Oh, Doctor! That’s the man – the one we found – Doctor, that’s _horrible_!”

Well, I’d suspected it wasn’t going to be good news, but that was worse than I’d expected. It’s usually another woman, not death by means too alarming to mention. I shifted about on the hard chair, already thinking about having to explain this to my client, and started playing with the nearest pencils and stationery oddments on the desk.

“Yes,” said Colonel Blimp, who’d come back in while we were talking. He gave me a look that was still what you might call wary, but I definitely detected some lurking humour in it and wondered wearily what I’d let myself in for by giving him Firbank’s number. This was going to cost me – half a pint at least, probably an uncomfortable exchange of information or two, and the ineffable smugness of Percy. At least somebody’d be happy, there was that. “As it happens, you’ve done us a favour. We were just in the process of trying to finish identifying the bodies, so that’s one less to worry about.”

I winced at that, thinking of Mrs Ackland again. 

“You can’t say anything, though, I’m afraid,” Colonel Blimp continued. “You’ll have to sign the Official Secrets Act and we’ll inform Mrs Ackland in due course. I understand that may leave you out of pocket – if that’s the case, UNIT will pay a certain amount in compensation.”

I shook my head. It wasn’t worth worrying about, not compared to whatever had happened back in that warehouse, and, anyway, maybe I owed them if they were going to save me telling that to the poor woman. What’s six pounds less or more got to say to that?

Colonel Blimp – or whatever it was he was really called – went off to get said forms, leaving me with the other two again.

“One thing,” I said, since it had been puzzling me ever since I got there. “Why’ve you got a police box in here?”

The Doctor only smiled at me; perfectly charming, perfectly clear he wasn’t saying more. “Yes. Strange, isn’t it?”

“And that’s not even the _half_ of it,” said Jo, but then he gave her a stern look. She shrugged and grinned back at him, and then instead, kindly offered me some tea, if I liked.

I shook my head, but thanked her politely. Tea would have been nice, but I didn’t want to push my luck or stay in here any longer than I had to. So, when they produced their forms, I gave them my name in blood at the end, and then they finally let me go. I headed off back to Windsor and my office to phone Mrs Ackland and tell her that I’d hit a dead end and there wasn’t anything else I could do; she’d have to try the police again. Which even if she was understandably annoyed about it, wasn’t exactly a lie, worse luck. 

Next, of course, I got Inspector Firbank in passing, demanding to know what I’d been up to, getting on the wrong side of Military Intelligence, and by the way, did I have the kettle on the go? If he’d got me out of the hands of James Bond, it was only right he got to hear about it, he said. Only thing to do was tell him I’d had to sign the Official Secrets act and couldn’t breath a word of what had happened, or they’d kill me. Which wasn’t a lie, either – even if he did say it sounded like a reasonable price to pay for the story as far as he was concerned.

 

**Coda: Found, at Brighton**

A police box isn’t the kind of thing you expect to see on a beach, especially not these days, but I was just off the train from Victoria with a one-way ticket (finally) in my pocket, and taking a walk along the front to my destination, and there it was. I looked at it, wondering if it was a joke, or someone’d done up a beach hut to look like one, when it disappeared with an odd grating noise. Mind, whatever mechanism they were using to work the trick sounded like it needed oiling. Looked as if they’d finally got a decent magician’s act in the place, if that little practice run was anything to go by. I’d have to find out later. 

For now, I had somewhere to be, and more important things to worry about than conjuring tricks – like whether or not it’s safe to let a building turn from a pile of bricks and mortar that happen to exist into something you could call a home. I’d tended to avoid the risk till now, but there comes a time when the Private Enquiries game is less of a career and more what you might call a repeated suicide attempt. Hit a certain age and it won’t really matter whether it’s pneumonia from standing around in damp alleyways all night, or meeting the fist of someone who’s taken a dislike to you, something’ll put a end to you sooner rather than later. Some would say it’s better that way, but, lucky for me, we don’t always get what we deserve, and there are one or two who disagree.

“Frank? That you, love?” That voice never changed – edge of the Irish, and never too far away from laughter, or maybe that was only when she was talking to me. Then Helen Mortimer herself emerged into the hallway. She was one of the few who’d prefer to see me keep breathing, but you’d probably worked that one out by now. “Thought I heard you.”

I put my case down, feeling almost as awkward as I had the first time I’d been here, straight out of prison, all those years ago. “Miles away for a minute, sorry.”

“You’re late, you know,” she said, with a smile. Look at it some ways, and _that_ was what you called an understatement. “What was it, delayed train?”

I followed her through into the kitchen. “No – just something odd I saw on the beach on the way over. A police box.”

“A police box?” 

“Funny thing, you see,” I said, as I sat down at the table, without thinking. “I keep running into police boxes.”

“Sounds painful. You ought to look where you’re going, Frank.” 

I grinned back, and we settled down to more important things, like making sure the pot of tea wasn’t wasted. Reality, not smoke and mirrors and illusions, that was what mattered in the end, wasn’t it?


End file.
